miamime

provocations & observations by William Plasencia 

The Circus That Is the Florida Republican Party Now

Paul Crespo demanded that Rivera resign his chairmanship of the Miami-Dade Republican Party at a raucous party meeting Thursday. Crespo said he was asked by police to step outside the meeting for going over his allotted speaking time.

... Crespo also said he had been barred from the party's Facebook page.

Clownish. That's the nicest word I could come up with the describe how Republicans in Miami are behaving in this primary election and it's one of the reasons I left the party years ago. Childish bickering, all-out attacks and cronyism are among the other reasons.

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Scientists Find Antibodies that Prevent Most HIV Strains from Infecting Human Cells

Scientists have discovered two potent human antibodies that can stop more than 90 percent of known global HIV strains from infecting human cells in the laboratory, and have demonstrated how one of these disease-fighting proteins accomplishes this feat. According to the scientists, these antibodies could be used to design improved HIV vaccines, or could be further developed to prevent or treat HIV infection. Moreover, the method used to find these antibodies could be applied to isolate therapeutic antibodies for other infectious diseases as well.

This is the most promising news I heard in a long time about HIV/AIDS research.

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Stop the City of Miami from closing the historic Gusman (Olympia) Theater

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The City of Miami says it will stop its $400,000 subsidy to the Gusman, which the theater needs in order to operate. If you live in the City of Miami, call your commissioner and Mayor Regalado and tell them what you think. They need public input. This theater is a true treasure and deserves to be preserved. If the city can find money to build a new skate park, they can find money to save the Gusman. --
William Plasencia
will@willplasencia.com
twitter: @MiamiMe

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Best parody of iPhone madness. Ever.

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Marc Johns: Three classic novels with laser eyes

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Love Marc Johns' work.

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In the NYTimes Magazine: Tuna’s End

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"The BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico, one of only two known Atlantic bluefin spawning grounds, has only intensified the crisis. By some estimates, there may be only 9,000 of the most ecologically vital megabreeders left in the fish’s North American stock, enough for the entire population of New York to have a final bite (or two) of high-grade otoro sushi."

It makes me sad that my kids will probably not have many opportunities to eat good, quality tuna, and other wild fish stocks, because of the greed of Boomers and X'ers and other equally rapacious generations.

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This is quite cool: Kindle Case from Moleskine (via Gadget Lab)

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Nokia E72: Two weeks to kill my Blackberry, but it survived

I have a love-hate relationship with Nokia. I absolutely, hands down believe that Nokia builds the nicest mobile handsets in the world. It's unfortunate that so many of them run a needlessly antiquated operating system that takes all the fun out of using a smartphones.

At the NokiaTalk conference in Miami last month I had an opportunity to talk to Olivier Puech, who oversees sales for Nokia for all of Latin America and the Caribbean, and he acknowledged that the company was playing catch-up to Apple and handset makers using Android. He said Nokia's upcoming N8 would be “as good – not better – but as good” an experience for users as the iPhone, which is a step in the right direction.

If Nokia decides the E72 can handle an upgrade to the next version of the Symbian OS, which is supposed to be more streamline than the S60 3rd Edition the E72 now runs, then it's worth taking a look. I'll explain why.

This phone is gorgeous and the build quality superb. It just feels solid and doesn't creak like my last two Blackberrys did. The battery life on the E72 is unbelieably good. With heavy use, I didn't need to recharge for two days. The keyboard kicks ass and so does the screen. I took this phone out during the Goombay Festival and the screen stood up well to the sunlight. The clickable mini-trackpad worked well but took some getting used to. As for speed, I was on the AT&T crapfest that's known as the EDGE network, so I couldn't really take the 3G-ready E72 through its paces. But I was able to upload photos to Flickr and video to Qik fairly quickly and without a hitch. In fact, photos and video are one area where the 5-megapixel E72 – and Nokia smartphones in general – really excel.

But it all goes down from there.

Let me just say that I'm grateful to Nokia for answering my plaintive cry during the NokiaTalk conference and lending me phone to try for two weeks. But people who are used to the Blackberry will never really be happy with the E72, at least not the ones living here in the US, where there are a lot of smartphone options. Here are my suggestions to Nokia:

Make it simple. I shouldn't have to pull out a manual to figure out how to change my home screen. Actually, I could say the same thing for almost any of the E72 features. Listen, I sync almost everything to Gmail or Google Apps and it took me more than hour to find a solution to sync my calendar and contacts to the E72 – and it wasn't even on the Nokia support site. That's really inexcusable. And Ovi sync was great, but it shouldn't be the only easy option.

Less options is better. I used to own a little Psion computer, so I know more or less how to get what I need out of the E72, but most people won't and most won't care to learn. They don't need to when they can just get a Blackberry or a Palm Pre and figure it out on their own.

Get social. I use Twitter and Facebook extensively but the apps for both on S60 were awful. Ok, maybe not awful but in comparison to SocialScope on the Blackberry, Gravity looks like it was cobbled together by Cro-Magnons. You know that apps in general are important both to the user and to your bottom line, so pump up that base.

Pay attention. Nokia phones should, at a minimum, be able to do what other phones in its class can do. The E72 in particular is meant for businesspeople who type a lot and don't have a lot of time. Let the user have customizable text shortcuts. Cut down on the number of keystrokes it takes to type out a message and send it. If you're serious about courting businesspeople to your smartphones then show them you respect their time.

For now, I'm going back to my craptastic Blackberry Curve, and will wait to see if the Nokia N8 is what the company claims it will be.

(download)

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Is Facebook privacy the real concern, and what's the value proposition of social media networks?

I was a panelist at the June 8 meeting of the Social Media Club South Florida. The panel discussion, led by addventures' Angie Moncada, centered around Facebook's privacy policy changes, but really that was just a springboard for a broader discussion of the expectations people should have about their own online privacy and the responsibility of the social media companies that store personal data.

From my perspective, choosing to share personal information on Facebook or Twitter is part of the value proposition you're faced with when you join these social media networks. You give up a portion of your privacy in return for the connectivity that these networks give you. Matt Chamberlin, who sat next to me during the panel discussion, said it best when he rightly pointed out that the trouble comes when companies change the rules midstream, which is exactly what Facebook has done several times during the last year. The Miami Herald's Niala Boodhoo, too, suggested that Facebook could do, and should have, done a better job of making it easier for people to navigate the arcane, multi-level privacy settings the company recently revamped.

The real concern I have with social media networks isn't so much whether companies are sharing my information with advertisers who want to show me context-driven ads, but whether those networks are doing enough to police fraud and identity theft (or forgery, which is damaging and much more rampant) and the damaging effects of malware. My fellow panelist Gary Bahadur spoke up about that last night, but most of the discussion centered around Facebook and passions ran hot at times as people were taking strong positions about personal responsibility versus corporate responsibility, and social media citizenry.

Below is a video of the panel discussion. It's worth a look-see.

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Foursquare Fail: The reasons I gave up

My frustration with Foursquare -- the location-based social media network -- has been on the rise for some time. At first it was because the popular service didn't have a Blackberry app that let me easily check into the places I frequent or see which Foursquare friends happen to be nearby at the moment. The company took care of that by pushing out some buggy betaware that, a few updates later, was usable. 

Then came the invites. As people I know saw my location notices on Twitter, I slowly started to receive invites from my friends on Foursquare. That's normal, after all it is a social network. I just never knew I had so many friends in Washington, D.C., or in Chicago, or Detroit. Well, I don't. No matter, I just clicked on the "ignore" button -- every day. There is no way to block people from sending friend invitations. It got to the point where I disabled my email alerts because the number of unsolicited invitations became bothersome.

But the last straw came today when the glaring fatal flaw of Foursquare became too apparent. Sitting at the Starbucks in Mary Brickell Village -- a dense retail hub near downtown Miami -- I tried to to check-in my location on Foursquare. Here's a sampling of what the app listed as possible places where I might be:

Starbuvks

Cafe Sci Sci -- twice

Balans -- twice

Baru Urbano -- twice

Rosinella's -- twice

Sushi Siam -- twice

Well, you get the picture. The whole premise of Foursquare depends on the ability of the user to check into a place and gain points. The value proposition for businesses -- future value, since I don't know many businesses locally that are enjoying much traffic from Foursquare yet -- is that people will flock to and spend money at the places their friends or acquaintances frequent. And while that premise is appealing, and the game can be fun, the quality control just isn't there right now. I don't feel like promoting or helping build a network whose makers seem to ignore the detrimental drawbacks undermining their own business model. 

Maybe I'll come back once they've fixed these flaws, but for now I'm not willing to be a sheep on Foursquare. I'll go bleat somewhere else.

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